Photos of Truman Capote and Joan Didion in Major Irving Penn Retrospective

Photographer Irving Penn (1917-2009) is the subject of a major retrospective at the MOP Foundation opening later this month.

Penn was a regular contributor to Vogue magazine for more than seven decades, revolutionising fashion photography. Irving Penn: Centennial running November 23 through May 1, 2025, captures every period of his 70 year career behind the camera, beginning in the late 1930s and continuing into the first decade of the 21st century.

Organised by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and presented exclusively in Spain at the MOP Foundation space in A Coruña, Galicia, the exhibition brings together 175 works including Penn’s portraits of celebrities, cultural luminaries, and labourers with the tools of their trades, abstract nudes and early documentary street scenes; compositions of flowers, signage, and street debris; fashion studies and still lives.

MOP Foundation President, Marta Ortega Pérez said: "Irving Penn’s image making is exemplary. In Penn’s hands the everyday becomes extraordinary, revealing the profound beauty in simplicity. His work does more than capture moments; it captures the essence of his subjects and invites us to see the world anew. His enduring legacy lies in the ability of his photographs to excite our imagination every time we see them, a photographer whose work remains as relevant and powerful today as it was decades ago."

The exhibition features Penn’s photographs of Hollywood stars Marlene Dietrich and Audrey Hepburn, designers Gianni Versace, Issey Miyake and Yves Saint Laurent, and writers and artists such as Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Salvador Dali, Zaha Hadid and Richard Avedon.